STATE HOUSE ROUNDUP -- Mostly familiar names return

By Matt Murphy STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Monday

Jan 7, 2019 at 9:30 AM

A recap and analysis of the week in state government.

With their right hands raised and their eyes full of optimism and hope, legislators -- some old and some new -- returned to Beacon Hill last week for the start of a new Legislature, eager to fulfill the promise of an election that returned mostly familiar faces to the seats of power.

Gov. Charlie Baker, House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Karen Spilka are all back, returned by the voters and their colleagues to their prominent posts from which Baker and Spilka both put education funding on the front burner to start 2019.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren aspires to the most prominent position of all.

The Cambridge Democrat officially entered the 2020 presidential fray on New Year's Eve, launching an exploratory committee and introducing her husband, Bruce, and pup, Bailey, to the nation before retiring to sip a Michelob Ultra (on Instagram) and watch "Casablanca" to ring in the New Year.

Warren spent the first weekend of 2019 far from Massachusetts or D.C., navigating the cornfields of Iowa while the national press dissects her "likability." But before her first trip as a candidate for president, she showed up Jan. 2 at the State House for legislative swearing-in ceremonies in the House and Senate after having coffee at the Parkman House with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.

In a week full of ceremony, lawmakers went first as 25 new members joined the House and five new faces entered the Senate.

House Democrats, for a sixth time, entrusted leadership of their branch to DeLeo, already the longest serving speaker and about to mark 10 years as speaker on Jan. 27.

Eight Democrats, however, registered their opposition to DeLeo by voting "present." One old rival, John Rogers, is still peeved that the speaker did away with term limits to extend his reign, while others expressed concern about the House's lack of transparency and open debate. Four freshman lawmakers tempted fate by making their first official vote a protest of leadership.

Rep. Maria Robinson proposed during a caucus prior to the vote to use secret ballots to elect a speaker. While a secret ballot would make it easier to vote against a leader like DeLeo without fear of repercussion, the irony was not lost on representatives like Rep. Nika Elugardo, who have criticized the House's lack of transparency.

"I have never been so happy to lose a vote because those things are recorded," Elugardo said.

On the other side of the building, Spilka's coronation lacked some of the same intrigue. After a turbulent 2017-2018 session featuring three Senate presidents, Democrats were united behind the Ashland Democrat for her first full term as president, and even Republicans leaders expressed their admiration for her.

Spilka, unlike DeLeo, followed up her election by giving an agenda-setting speech for the Senate during which she declared "adequately funding our education system" a top priority. And in that, she may have a partner in Baker.

Baker, in his second inaugural address, put Beacon Hill on watch for his budget due later this month, when he said he will put forward a plan to update the formula the state uses to fund public education. Education Secretary Jim Peyser said afterward it will "represent a significant new investment in our K-12 education system."

The unanswered question from last week, however, is for how long these three will get along.

No one is expecting the governor, speaker or Senate president to all of sudden start hurling invective at one another in the press. In fact, Baker celebrated their ability to do just the opposite.

"Let others engage in cheap shots and low blows. Let's make our brand of politics positive and optimistic, instead of cruel and dark," he said.

But that won't make the divisions go away; it just makes them more subtle.

Consider these comments in speeches delivered by Spilka and Baker within a day of each other.

Spilka, as she leads the Senate into her first full term as president, declared "the time for small ideas and incremental changes is over." She followed that up by hinting at tax reform and listing education funding and climate change as two areas she was committed to tackling.

Baker strummed a different chord, paying homage to the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other style of governing that earned him his high approval ratings and a second term.

"In this era of snapchats, tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts, putdowns and smackdowns, I’d ask you all to remember that good public policy is about perseverance and collaboration," Baker said. "Many times, it is a story written frame by frame by many players who write it over time, relentlessly pursuing an objective."

Time will tell who gets to write the next chapter, but before the prologue gets written on this next book, the epilogue needed to be finished on the last one.

Bookended by Warren announcing for president and the governor delivering his second inaugural address was the actual end of the 2017-2018 legislative session, which kept a small number of lawmakers (and reporters) in the State House late on New Year's Eve, and back again on New Year's Day.

Baker got his work done early on New Year's Eve, signing a bill that would extended unemployment benefits for workers locked out of their jobs by their employer. Instigated by the six-month-old lockout by National Grid of 1,250 of its gas workers, some had feared the extension of benefits would prolong the lockout, but on Jan. 2, the two sides announced a tentative deal.

After that, some gunk got into gears.

The House and Senate appeared to be working off different scripts, legislators stuck under the dome grew irritated that champagne plans were going flat and the hope of a New Year's Eve "sine die" evolved into plans for reconvening on the holiday.

The end-of-session scramble did yield some fruit, however, with lawmakers agreeing on legislation to guard against harmful flame retardants and the negative impacts of increasingly common data breaches.

Anything left undone died when Rep. Paul Donato gavelled the 190th General Court closed on New Year's Day, while the bills that did squeak through under the wire have either been signed or live on atop Baker's desk, awaiting his signature or a quiet demise.

Attorney General Maura Healey was one of the few victors from November who didn't take an oath last week, but she pushed her way into the news cycle anyway by joining a lawsuit to appeal the ruling of a Texas federal court judge striking down the Affordable Care Act.

"We have so many people potentially affected by this, and the goal here is to make sure that this ruling gets thrown out in the Fifth Circuit and we can go back to ensuring that we have a workable system in place," Healey sa

The attorney general will take her second oath of office later this month, on Jan. 16, along with the other constitutional officers who are all returning, including Treasurer Deb Goldberg, Secretary of State William Galvin and Auditor Suzanne Bump.